


In The Shade

by Repeatinglitanies



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don’t copy to another site, F/M, Gen, Moral Ambiguity, Vanya and Five grew up with different names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27281386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Repeatinglitanies/pseuds/Repeatinglitanies
Summary: Fiveya Week Day 4 Prompt: Sparrow Academy AUShe had been contracted (more like blackmailed) into a hit job. It goes just about as well as can be expected.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31
Collections: fiveya week (round 2)





	In The Shade

Octavia disliked Mr. St John at first sight. And it had nothing to do with being made to walk into a building filled with human suffering, a hospital of all places. 

She could hear the moans and “silent” screams of patients who were either waiting or wanting to die. Hardly a chore considering she could detect the presence of other living things by the white noise of their movements and functioning organs, simply creatures going about their lives. Most people have become so used to the sound of their own existence that they had taken it for granted, rendering themselves deaf to it. Even at the cost of failing to detect when illness and death were near.

At least, that was how Octavia saw it. She would like to think her preternatural sense of hearing gave her a unique view of the people around her. But she suspected that it also blinded her to other ways of looking at humanity and the world at large.

Her old caretakers would have told her to be kinder to the old and the infirm, especially since they don’t have much time left. And Mr. St John was both. An old man as well as a dying one. His assistant told her that he was slowly dying of cancer. And the doctors didn’t think he would live past the end of the year, which was only a few months away.

If the assistant shared that in hopes Octavia would take pity on the old man, then energy and breath had been wasted. 

Because Octavia did not appreciate being blackmailed into visiting an old man who clearly had an obscene amount of wealth, albeit not much time left to enjoy it. It also didn’t help that Mr St John reminded her of her old caretakers, all of whom she had killed the moment she decided she would no longer be returning to the facility she had once called home.

The old man had to be lifted from his bed to lean on a mound of pillows. And he had the same look to him. Not in the sense that he physically resembled the people who had monitored and nurtured Octavia’s growth and abilities for the double purpose of understanding her biology and using her to rid the world of what they deemed as the “evil” and “unjust.” 

As a little girl, Octavia simply absorbed their teachings like a sponge to water. Concentrated on subjects they wanted her to learn. Killed who they wanted her to kill. And in time, if they wanted her to create a cyclone that would devastate whole cities, she did that as well. All in the name of pleasing them and being told that she was doing the “right thing.” That what she had done would save innocent people from suffering and death, even as she herself doled out the same thing to what looked to be the same people she was supposed to be saving .

Trusting child that she was, she believed that the things done to her was for her own good as well as the world’s. 

But then she started to realize that she was the only child in the facility. She had once noticed a picture of another little girl in one of the scientists’ desks. And asked out loud why the child couldn’t come to play with her. The resulting pallor on the scientist’s (who turned out to be the child’s mother) face and the fear that sparked in her eyes had been immediately brushed off. But it stuck with Octavia.

And it led her to discover that she’d been living a beautiful lie. A life she once believed was filled with certainty and purpose, where she had people who cared about her. But the truth was that she was nothing more than an experiment to them. A fascinating yet dangerous one at that.

Octavia had never questioned why she needed to take the white pills. The director told her off the bat that it was a vitamin to keep her healthy. But when asked why he won’t take one too, the director had said it was specially made just for her. 

She hadn’t thought much about that then. Just as she never questioned why the dosage of her medication was lessened every time she had to use her powers. Or why the more force needed for an exercise or a mission, the less of the drug she had to take. There was even a time when she was put off the medication for a week, which also happened to be the week before she was told to focus on a moon-sized asteroid and blast it to smithereens.

At the time, she only needed a small whistle no bigger than her thumb to do the job. Her caretakers allowed her to keep it, even gave her a silver chain so that she could put it around her neck. Octavia hadn’t known then that the earth would have been annihilated without her intervention. And that the whistle was simply a gift offered in short-lived gratitude.

She could have lived in blissful ignorance until the day she died. After all, she had no desire to leave the facility. She had all she needed there. But unbeknownst to her, things were about to change.

Octavia found out later that the success of the Siberian facility in guiding her had been a double-edged sword, bringing in new people and fostering an air of hostility between the old guard and the newcomer upstarts. The changes were supposed to make everything better. But all it seemed to have done was cause toxic rivalries and Machiavellian office politics. And it was that environment in particular that exposed the cracks to the beautiful lie Octavia had been fed for as long as she could remember.

Someone decided to get drunk near her quarters even as alcohol was strictly forbidden. The idiot also decided it was the perfect place to insult Octavia by saying that she was basically a stupid freak in the form of a little girl, who was made to believe she was special when everyone else was actually doing the hard work for her by training her. And that she was in fact inferior to the members of the Sparrow Academy because she didn’t know how to smile nor promptly take orders from her superiors. It wouldn’t have hurt as much if the idiot’s drinking companion actually defended her. But said companion didn’t. The only reply to the insults was for the drunk idiot to keep quiet else Octavia heard him.

Octavia knew the voice of the more sober one. It was one of her caretakers.

The one that even allowed her to keep the whistle. 

Apparently for that whole month, one faction in the Siberian facility gave word that she was given a high dose while the other side said that Octavia had a watered down medication. That realisation immediately sobered the drinkers. And they quietly crept into her room to check if she was asleep. Octavia made sure not to disappoint them.

But what had been said could not be unsaid. Thoughts that she had once managed to suppress started to resurface until she could no longer see the difference between her caretakers, old and new, to the supposed “bad guys” she was ordered to dispatch.

So she decided to stay true to her lessons and ended her caretakers the same way she did her previous victims. The same way her caretakers taught her to.

Mr St John had the same measuring look about him, studying her to gauge how useful she could be to him. Octavia suspected that if he still could, he would put her under a microscope or have her killed just to do an autopsy on her. Not out of any malice or ill will, just out of simple scientific curiosity without any thought for empathy or humanity. Because to people like him, she wasn’t human at all. Merely a useful tool.

Octavia would have killed him on sight for dredging up those memories. But she had been told before coming here that her whereabouts would be leaked to the Sparrow Academy should she try anything on the old man. So for the meantime, Octavia was resolved to be on her best behaviour.

There was a certain irony to her current predicament. She left Siberia and came to this country expressly because she wanted to meet the world-famous Sparrow Academy, the members of which were just like her, children born with extraordinary abilities. When she found out what the Sparrow Academy was, Octavia had to laugh at the depth of deception that the facility fed her. Her caretakers had told her she was the only one. 

But apparently, everyone else in the world except for her knew about what the Sparrow Academy could do. Thankfully, the sharp feeling of betrayal had been mixed with an uplifting sense of hope. She had figured that if there were people who could actually understand her and make her feel less alone, it would be the members of the Academy.

In her most extravagant and wildest dreams, Octavia had imagined turning up at their door and being greeted with open arms. Of the Sparrow Academy being delighted to find another member.

But the fact of the matter was that it would be nothing more than wishful thinking. 

When she finally made it to their house, there was a large human barricade separating her from making her way to the Academy’s front door. In hindsight, that turned out to be a blessing. The Academy was on its way off to another mission. She got to see the boy Ben lead his other team members to the car in a single file. 

Out of curiosity, she used her acute hearing to determine if the monsters Ben could summon were simply packed inside his body or if his body was some sort of portal from which the monsters could come out from. No nonhuman heartbeat there. So she supposed Ben was opening a portal through his stomach.

She would have turned her attention to the member that came after Ben when she heard an otherworldly white noise coming from Sir Reginald Hargreeves. Octavia had been trained to detect the presence of all types of animals by the sound of their bodies. And she could safely say that no animal, no human, in fact nothing on this planet could produce the sound Hargreeves was making. It was as if he had organs not found in humans, while missing some at the same time. 

Sir Reginald Hargreeves was something else wearing human skin (or rather, something very much like human skin). That wouldn’t have deterred Octavia, if it wasn’t for the fact that she heard that inhuman heartbeat before, as well as what she thought was gills taking in and replacing air instead of human lungs.

The Siberian facility had a Chairman who only visited once a year. But every time he was in residence, Octavia was kept far away from him. Or at least, her caretakers tried. Once, she managed to escape and make her way to one of the meeting rooms. She was almost at the door before she was caught and dragged back to her room. But not before she heard that strange sound. 

At the time, she had thought nothing of it because she didn’t know any better. But she had spent years since then studying why and how sounds were produced. So to hear that from what appeared to be human simply did not make sense. 

That irregularity was secondary to the revelation that Reginald Hargreeves, founder of the Sparrow Academy was also the Chairman of the Siberian facility.

It was well known that he adopted children with special abilities to train them to save the world. If so, why didn’t he adopt Vanya as well? Why were Ben and the others allowed to live in the light while she was consigned to the shadows, expected to live and die in a covert underground facility?

She would have sorely wanted to ask that. But her instincts told her that it wasn’t a good idea. There was only one of her. And if she revealed herself, Octavia was certain that the creature in the guise of a pompous old man would order the Academy members to attack and probably capture her, or worse, kill her. 

Somehow, she doubted she’d be given a proper bedroom in the Academy premises. So with a heavy heart and a sudden downpour that had people raising their umbrellas, Octavia left.

And over the years, she tried to keep a low profile and hoped that there were other “bad guys” out there to keep the Sparrow Academy busy. Because that meant they wouldn’t be able to focus on looking for her, if Hargreeves even told them about her. 

Somehow, she didn’t think he would unless his hand was forced. Reginald Hargreeves didn’t strike her as the type to admit mistakes. And leaving Octavia to a bunch of people who devolved into spoilt children after their success only to be killed en masse was surely a mistake. Besides, how was he to explain that the Sparrow Academy was used for public consumption to feed ordinary people the idea of what heroes should be while Octavia was used for the shadier missions, the ones too dirty for heroic hands?

She and the Sparrow Academy were two sides of the same coin. She didn’t have proof. But Reginald Hargreeves had intended neither side to know about the other. So it was likely that all efforts to find her would be done without the Sparrow members’ knowledge. Unless someone like St. John decided to inform the Academy of a dangerous individual with powers.

While Octavia was sure that her powers exceeded the Sparrow Academy’s, she didn’t feel like taking the risk. Anything could happen. Having more resources doesn’t automatically make you a winner. It just means you have an advantage. Most of the time, you succeed either because or in spite of it. But not always. And Octavia only had one life to live.

So even though she absolutely hated being blackmailed, she decided to hear what St John had to say.

“Thank you for coming all the way to see a dying old man. I know we used foul methods to get you here. But know that it was nothing personal. It was an action born out of simple desperation.”

Living had become a struggle for St John. It was clear in his every breath and movement. But Octavia wasn’t fooled into letting her guard down.

“Let’s cut to the chase, Mr St John. You might not have done it out of malice. But I assure you that it feels very personal when you threaten to expose me to a group that would probably exterminate me on sight once you show them what I look like. What do you want?”

“To cut a long story short, I want you to kill Christopher.”

“Who the hell is Christopher?”

But Octavia already had a feeling about Christopher. Had he been a normal person, St John wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of tracking Octavia down. And tempting fate by threatening her.

“He’s one of you, of course. Like you, he was also born on the 1st of October 1989. And he grew up to display remarkable intellect as well as abilities. Because of those abilities, one of our researchers thought it apt to name him after the patron saint of travelers.”

A guy who could teleport? Couldn’t St John have contracted a small army to do the deed? But more importantly…

“Why not ask the Sparrow Academy for help?”

St John gave a grimace that could have been a smile.

“Unfortunately, Sir Reginald isn’t interested. He never bothered to give his reasons. But I suspect that even he doesn’t want his precious Academy going up against Christopher. You see, this isn’t my first bout of cancer. I’m not talking about remissions or recurrences. I mean, that I have died countless times only to be brought back to the exact point of time when I find out about the cancer. Christopher had always been a vindictive little shit. So he means for me to die and suffer all over again. A never ending cycle. And I’ve now reached the point where I’m tired. All I want is to die and be consigned to oblivion. If I thought that begging for forgiveness at perceived faults would do the trick, then I would do it in a heartbeat. But I don’t think that would satisfy him. The only way to stop him is to permanently take him out of the equation. The Sparrow Academy wouldn’t be able to do it. He can manipulate both space and time and easily elude them. But I’ve heard of what you did to the asteroid. And I’ve read the projections on your powers. It still has potential to grow, the potential to wipe out every life in the universe. I’ve heard physicists say that time is simply a human construct. If so, then time loses meaning in the face of one who can bring about the end of everything, which is tantamount to the end of time itself.”

_____________________________

His little speech took a lot out of St John. Octavia had to give him about an hour to recover. His assistant insisted that he could finish the story for his employer. But both Vanya and St John refused the offer.

For St John, it was simply his way of getting something off his chest. He wanted to be part of this murder plot as much as he can.

For Octavia, it was a mix of practicality and curiosity. If she was to be successful, she had to know as much about Christopher as she could. St John knew him firsthand. He had indicated as much that he was one of Christopher’s caretakers while the assistant was most likely working on second hand knowledge.

A part of her also sympathised with Christopher. Because she had been the animal trapped in a cage as well. And she remained unconvinced that St John did nothing to be punished in this way. Besides, this was actually a prime opportunity to investigate the origins of the facilities. If there were two facilities in existence around the same time, it’s likely being supported by the same chairman, Reginald Hargreeves. 

Her time in the outside world gave her access to information previously out of her reach. Such as the knowledge that human infants required nine months of gestation in their mother’s womb. And it is preceded by the union of the father’s sperm cell with the mother’s egg cell.

It was impossible for a baby to be born in a different fashion, at least with current technology. But it was even more impossible (if there ever were degrees of impossibilities) for a child to be born to a mother who hadn’t been pregnant when the day started. Where was the sperm cell? And where was the usual nine months of gestation?

Octavia wished she knew the answer. Because according to St John, she was one of 43 babies born spontaneously on the 1st of October 1989. There were facilities around the world designed to house and train these children except for the seven Hargreeves took for his Sparrow Academy.

“If we were born without warning, how was it that the facilities were constructed before we were even born.” 

Octavia knew that for a fact after reading about the Siberian facility’s history and eavesdropping on conversations she wasn’t supposed to. Her facility was constructed in the early 70’s, nearly 20 years before she had even been born. 

“We just did as Sir Reginald instructed. He never revealed how he was able to obtain this information. But one day, he delivered Christopher into our care just as I’m sure he sent you to the Siberian facility.”

So if anyone knew the answer, it would be Hargreeves. The one person she didn’t want to meet. At least, not by herself.

In the end, St John wasn’t much help in uncovering her origins. But he did provide loads of information on Christopher. Again, she was sure he was downplaying his role in Christopher’s “upbringing,” if it could be called that. But she didn’t want to give the impression that she wasn’t going to kill Christopher.

Because as much as she could sympathise with Christopher’s anger, Octavia also had herself to worry about.

St John revealing her to the Sparrow Academy was a very real threat. So she had no choice but to comply. Even if she really didn’t want to do it, and not just because it would be difficult to do anything should Christopher use time manipulation on her. 

Much like the one in Siberia, Christopher’s facility only had him as a test subject. He would be taught all types of skills from lessons in arithmetic to the more unconventional ways of snapping a man’s neck. With his inquisitive mind and penchant for the scientific method, Christopher was unlikely to take things at face value. Which led him to totally disregard rules that he deemed to be nonsense. His spatial jumps also made it particularly easy to leave and escape punishment, making him a lot harder to control than most children, even the other children reared in facilities.

And Octavia could pretty much surmise that it didn’t take Christopher too long to figure out he was being used for his abilities, that he was intended to stay in the facility until the day he died, with brief visits to the outside world just to complete missions.

But before he could leave the facility for good like Octavia did, he was put in stasis at thirteen years old. A state in which his body was rendered unconscious for a long period of time. His body covered in a substance that Hargreeves said would keep his body healthy despite being motionless for what could amount to years.

While the process of putting him in stasis was occurring, St John and another of his colleagues Mr Carlisle had been away from the facility. 

That was the only thing that spared them from being one of the casualties in the facility, one that was now fully inaccessible to anyone.

Somehow, Christopher escaped stasis though it should have been impossible. And because St John had been the director, Christopher made sure he was punished for whatever perceived grievance the boy had accumulated over the years. The thing about Christopher was that he had time by his side. He had waited till the time St John was brought to his lowest point to put his “curse” into effect. He had St John thinking the old man was safe from years of no word from Christopher until the boy struck.

It was debatable which one got the worse punishment. But St John had said that he was happy he wasn’t Carlisle.

Carlisle was the one who doled out the punishments, on the times they managed to tire Christopher out enough that he couldn’t simply teleport away. Every iteration of St John’s life always came with a visit from the police. Not about the facility. But about pieces of Carlisle’s body all buried in the same place.

They wanted to ask him who could have done it only for St John to lie because they wouldn’t believe him anyway.

St John suspected that Carlisle was brought back the very moment Christopher started torturing him. If Carlisle was still in his right mind, St John wouldn’t know and didn’t want to know.

_______________________________

Living through multiple iterations of the same thing gave St John a good idea of when and where Christopher would be. Christopher had to dispose of Carlisle’s remains, after all. So the plan was to lie in wait. And kill him before he even had the chance to know Octavia was there.

At least, that was what Octavia had been counting on.

What St John didn’t tell her (and she would only find out later) was that in his other iterations, he also sent other people to the same spot at that same exact time. She suspected St John didn’t want any reason for her to back out and discontinue the assassination attempt. And if so, he would be correct in thinking that she would have risked the Sparrow Academy if she knew her chances against Christopher was actually infinitesimally small. 

She didn’t want to die. But dying would be heaven compared to what Christopher had done to St John and Carlisle.

Octavia understood St John’s motivations. But that didn’t mean she’d forgive it. Though she’d find it hard to see how else she can retaliate when all the old man wanted was to die for good.

“It’s no use hiding,” the man who could only be Christopher said as he brought the more deadly end of the spade down on the ground, “I know you’re here.”

He wants to talk. That’s a good thing. Good for Octavia, at least.

She blew her whistle. The sound should be more than enough to blast Christopher’s body to smithereens. For Octavia, raw power had never been the problem. All her life, she had trained herself in controlling it. Right now, all she wanted was for her target’s body to disperse into tiny pieces. And only his body. Her younger self would have leveled the whole forest that was Christopher’s dumping ground for his victim. 

But she had years of experience to hone the raw power. The trick was to understand how much was needed to accomplish her objective. Then the remaining energy she had converted from sound needed to be used elsewhere. Depending on her location and the season, she would use the energy to help the weather along. 

Since it was only a few months till the end of the year, rain would be her best bet. Besides, the downpour would help wash away the blood and parts scattered around the area.

So it was done without much fanfare. She felt equal parts relief and disappointment. In another life or had circumstances been different, Christopher could have been a friend and comrade-at-arms. 

“AH!”

A flash of blue and a foreign sound had been followed by a sharp pain on the side of her neck. On instinct, Octavia used a hand to staunch the bleeding at the same time as she had turned towards the direction of the light and her attacker, only to find nothing there.

Her heart which had managed to stay calm earlier was now beating wildly at what she couldn’t understand. It was part of her training to maintain situational awareness. She knew there hadn’t been anyone within miles.

Octavia tried to focus on the sound again. It was gone. And then it came back behind her, accompanied by a stab to the back. Unfortunately, her attacker wasn’t sloppy or weak enough to leave the knife. Now her blood had two places to leak out of.

Christopher was- is a teleporter. But how could he still be attacking her when she just witnessed his demise? 

No one can come back from the dead, could they?

A blow to the face had her stumbling to the ground. She attempted to get up but suddenly, his weight was on her. One arm holding her free hand and knowing full well that removing the other hand from her neck could prove fatal. 

“You shouldn’t have done that. Normally, I’d kill the people who even slightly inconvenienced me. But you’re an interesting girl. Far more interesting than the usual people St John has doing his dirty work.”

To Octavia’s shock, the voice belonged to a young boy. And one that looked nothing like the man she had killed earlier.

“St John and Reginald Hargreeves made an erroneous assumption. They thought I needed my body to use my powers. But they were wrong. My body may be in stasis and stuck underground. But my consciousness can go anywhere, anytime. As far as my powers go, a body is just another location. All I needed to do was take over from the original owner. Not that hard, all things considered. Most of them were weak willed to begin with.”

“So you take other people’s bodies without asking? Doesn’t that make you a parasite?” At this point, Octavia knew that she was at Christopher’s mercy. True, she still had enough power to blast him to smithereens. But at her current state, she lacked the control needed to keep herself out of harm’s way. At this range, she could kill his current vessel. But at the cost of her own life and possibly a good chunk of the world with no assurance that he wouldn’t be able to escape.

She expected him to slap her, just as some of her caretakers would whenever they thought she was being disrespectful.

Instead, he took hold of the silver chain that held her whistle and in another flash of blue light, her necklace was gone.

“Where is it, you little bastard?!”

“First you call me a parasite, and now you call me a bastard? Well, Miss Pot, I think you should stop calling the kettle black.”

What the hell was Christopher talking about?

He must have caught the confusion on her face.

“I see that you can manipulate sound. Earlier, I didn’t catch your accent. But you must be weakening to allow it to slip out. As I was trying to say earlier, what right do you have to call me a bastard when you’re one yourself. Both in the literal and metaphorical sense. Really? Trying to kill me just because St John paid or blackmailed you? I’m also assuming you were born on October the 1st of the year 1989 probably to a woman who never expected you, probably not even her husband’s biological child if the woman had one in the first place?”

Christopher didn’t bother waiting for her response. So far, he only asked questions he already knew the answers to.

“So what can you give me in exchange for your life?”

So it’s come to that. Octavia took a good look at Christopher. His outside appearance was that of a young boy. But one look at his eyes and she knew that he’s lived countless lifetimes. An old man in a child’s body.

She sensed that he was giving her a chance, that he wasn’t the type to sadistically dangle a lifeline only to cut it off just for the pleasure of seeing the despair on his would-be victim’s face.

And then she noticed the change in the direction of his gaze.

Oh. He was thirteen when he was put in stasis. But then again, he could jump to bodies just as well as he could jump through space and time. Surely, he would have already…

She wanted to vomit at what she was about to offer him. In her training, Octavia had been taught to exploit weakness. Including this one. And she hadn’t survived this long just to give up on life now.

But still, he was in a child’s body. She couldn’t. 

No. Actually she could if that was the only way to survive. So against her better judgment, she used the hand that was on her neck to unbutton her shirt.

“What are you doing?!”

This time, it was Christopher who appeared confused, even flustered.

“Obviously, I was angling for you to use your powers to unearth my body!”

Oh. That was a relief. That was what she thought before she lost consciousness.

______________________

And then Octavia’s eyes opened again. Except it seemed that everything around her save for Christopher was on rewind.

Things only went back to normal once she was again in her hiding place, her whistle around her neck. And Christopher (in the original body she had first seen him in) had put the shovel on the ground.

This time, she knew better than to go on the offensive.

“So, do we have a deal?” He asked as she approached. 

He fully expected her to agree. She wasn’t sorry at all to disappoint him.

“Not quite.”

In response, his eyes narrowed as he immediately shifted to a stance in preparation for another fight. It should have alarmed her. But she sensed that this time, it was he who was at a disadvantage. Despite time being rewound, he seemed more haggard than their first go-around.

He had mostly exhausted his energy turning back time to “heal” the wounds he had inflicted on her.

Christopher was confident that she’d agree to his deal only after this one encounter. Something about that touched her.

“Relax. I’m not going to attack again. I’m just saying that the deal is unequal. St. John threatened to expose me to the Sparrows if you don’t end his suffering-“

“I’ll do one better. I’ll pay him a visit and promise him his long-desired wish. He knows I always keep my word. And that will shut him up. Besides, I won’t risk a different timeline where you won’t be here to help me get my body back.”

Christopher wasn’t getting it.

“Let me finish what I have to say. Because that’s still not enough. Even if St John won’t expose me. I’m still going to be looking over my shoulder for the day Hargreeves and the Sparrows find me. Which also means that even if you get your body back, you’d still have the Sparrow Academy to deal with. Isn’t that why you focused your torture on St John and Carlisle while you left Reginld Hargreeves alone? As tough as you think you are, even you can’t take all seven Sparrow members and Reginald Hargreeves. And you know it.”

His eyes widened at her words, telling her that he finally got what she was about to suggest.

“You want us to team up?”

And for the first time in a long time, Octavia smiled. Strangely enough, it wasn’t at the thought of finally being able to face her fears and possibly take revenge on the man (or rather, the creature) that ruined both of their lives. 

She would never admit it to Christopher. But being here with him, it felt right. It felt like she truly belonged.

The members of the Sparrow Academy could keep the glories showered upon them under the light of the sun. If her assessment of Christopher was correct, the both of them were content to stay in the shade. As long as they knew they weren’t alone.


End file.
